Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Justifying farm workers exclusion from OHS

Yesterday
I participated in a research panel at Athabasca University where faculty
presented research in progress. I don’t recall the name of my panel (in my mind
it was “Capitalism: Oh My!” but I presume the real name was more scholarly). I
presented on some research I’ve been doing on farm work that is currently in peer review. Below is the 15-minute
presentation I gave.

Alberta
is the sole province that excludes agricultural workers from the ambit of its
occupational health and safety act. This exclusion denies workers in one of
Canada’s most hazardous industries basic safety right—things even university
professors take for granted. For example, Alberta farm workers have no right to
know about safety hazards, no right to participate in their remediation and no
right to refuse unsafe work. It also means the government cannot intervene on
farms to ensure workplaces are safe and can’t investigate injuries on farms
except to determine if they are criminal.

Alberta
faces significant criticism for this exclusion, in part because it seems to
prioritize the interests of farmers over those of workers. This study is a
qualitative content analysis that examines how government members of the
legislative assembly (MLAs) justified this exclusion in the legislative debates
of the past decade. This analysis gives us a sense of how politicians have
sought to resist pressure to regulate farm safety. It also gives us some
insight (albeit imperfect) into the question of why politicians would resist
pressure to regulate farm safety.

What
I’ve found is that three narratives justifying this regulatory exclusion emerge
from the Hansard statements:

Education is better than regulation

Farms cannot be regulated

Farmers don't want and can't afford regulation

What
I propose to do with the rest of our time today is outline and critique each of
these narratives.

The
first narrative is: Education is better than regulation. Herein MLAs assert
that the government’s proper role in farm safety is to provide information
about safe practices—not enforce the adoption of such practices. To justify
this position, MLAs have (at times) suggested that information prevents injury.
At other times, MLAs have asserted that education is more effective than
regulation at preventing injury.

These
assertions fly in the face of the small number of studies that have been done on
the effect of educational programs on farm safety. They also run contrary to the bulk of the studies about the
effect of educational programs on workplace safety. Basically, the literature (and common sense) suggest that while
knowledge is a prerequisite for safe workplaces, there is little evidence that
knowledge alone has much effect on injury outcomes. Only active regulation has
been shown to reduce workplace injuries.

The
MLAs’ position (articulated by former premier Ed Stelmach) that “You can’t
legislate common sense” is clearly wrong. Mandatory bike helmets, child car
seats, and seat-belt usage laws all legislate “common sense” and have resulted
in significant injury reductions. Overall, this narrative is invalid.

The
second narrative is: Farms cannot be regulated. In short, MLAs have asserted
that there is something unique about farms that precludes regulation. Alas,
what is unique about farms is elusive.

MLAs
sometimes indicate that farms are mixed-use properties (i.e., homes and
businesses) thus cannot be regulated. Unfortunately for this argument, not all
farms have this characteristic—some are just businesses. And the government
does regulate greenhouses, mushroom farms and nurseries—some of which are
mixed-use agricultural operations. Essentially, this is an obviously defective argument—the
government can and does regulate mixed-use work sites.

MLAs
then switch gears to suggest that “family farms” (which are somehow distinct
from corporate farms) ought not be regulated. But MLAs cannot specify any characteristics of a family farm
that would allow us to distinguish between a “family farm” and a “corporate
farm”. Many small farms are incorporated. Many incorporated farms are family
owned and quite large. Many large farms are sole proprietorships. And so forth.
This argument appears to simply be a rhetorical device to sidetrack discussion.

Finally,
MLAs will also assert that the nature of the labour force (often comprising friends
and family members) precludes regulation. This ignores that friends and family members
are employed in many businesses (e.g., restaurants, construction, retail), all
of which the government successfully regulates. Again, we have a largely
invalid narrative.

The
third narrative is: Farmers don’t want and can’t afford regulation. Let’s start
with “farmers can’t afford regulations”. There is no evidence suggesting this is the case—it is just a
bald statement. Further, we expect all other businesses to bear the cost
associated with workplace safe. MLAs never explain why farmers should be
allowed to externalize those costs (in the form of injury) on workers?

What
this assertion does do is it displaces concerns about worker safety with
concerns about farm bankruptcy. In this way, the desire of farmers (we don’t
want regulation) is turned from a bald statement of self-interest into an
unverifiable rationale (farmers don’t want regulation because they can’t afford
it) that makes farm profitability the paramount concern. Again, hardly a
compelling case for maintaining the exclusion of farm workers.

If
the arguments MLAs muster to defend this exclusion are so obviously defective, why
then do MLAs continue to resist regulation? Now, it may be that MLAs aren’t
that bright and simply don’t see that the narratives they just to justify the
exclusion are invalid—but I don’t think that is universally the case. Rather, I
think the answers can be found in the votes.

Rural
riding have historically elected conservative MLAs. And Conservative MLAs have
ensured that rural riding have maintained disproportionately large
representation in the legislature. In effect, there is a symbiotic relationship
between rural ridings and the conservative government, wherein political
support from ridings (in the form of votes) begets political support from
politicians (in the form of program spending and favourable legislation).

Preventing
the regulation of workplace safety in agriculture is, then, part of Alberta’s
culture of cronism. The narratives advanced by MLAs simply provide political
cover, both for employers who continue to expose workers to unsafe conditions
and for the politicians that allow this to continue.